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I know there are a couple of threads about drives that don't work and a few posts about some that do, but the info is scattered in different threads. Maybe we can start a thread that lists the make and model of drives that do work (at the present time) for those that are looking to purchase an external drive.

<strong class='bbc'>New Member of the 9K club & 922/612 User<br /></strong><span style='font-size: 8px;'>"A release is not a release until it is released." - Me. <br />"To the true believer, no proof is necessary. To the non believer, no proof is sufficient." - Peter James (Derived from a Stewert Chase Quote)</span>

Ok... I colored the initial posts. Good idea twindaddy. Will make it easier to scan

<strong class='bbc'>New Member of the 9K club & 922/612 User<br /></strong><span style='font-size: 8px;'>"A release is not a release until it is released." - Me. <br />"To the true believer, no proof is necessary. To the non believer, no proof is sufficient." - Peter James (Derived from a Stewert Chase Quote)</span>

Attached a SimpleTech 500G drive, brand new. The system reformatted the drive as expected. After the receiver reset itself, the USB Storage function was accessed and gave me the error message indicating no device was attached. A second reset produced no change.

I think the Seagate FreeAgent series is the biggest offender. (although there is a work-around).There have been a sprinkling of problems with few other drives I've noticed here and there, especially on satelliteguys.. but did not see any real pattern.

Only had a problem once, and most likely it's my fault, wanted to move data that would take 8 hours to do so. Too much data, the receiver froze, eventually a soft reboot solved the screen freeze, but no data got moved. At least, did not lose any data and that is the best thing.

Lately, I have been trying out a lot of "home brew" USB drives. I bought a few USB 2.0 enclosures (some for less than $15) and tried various drives that I had (I put a large drive in my PC so I freed up two drives there). All of them happened to be WD drives of various sizes (250 GBs, 120 GBs). All you have to do is set them up as the master drive (no jumpers on the back of the drive) and put them in the USB enclosure and attach the cables. No problems with either of them. I also had an old WD 120 GB drive that was in my old Dishplayer (model 7100). Put it in the USB enclosure and re-formatted it and it works fine too.

Between my two ViP receivers I am using 5 drives (3 on one and 2 on the other and I do NOT move them between receivers). I have a total of 1.62 TBs of external storage. I use a USB switch (four port so I can add more drives) on each receiver to select which external drive is active.